LAHORE: Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Monday said evidence has pointed towards India’s involvement in the attack on Amir Sarfraz Tamba, who was shot inside his house a day ago.

Addressing a press conference at the FIA office, the minister said the attack followed a similar pattern of assassinations in the past, which Pakistani officials claimed were carried out by India.

Tamba was one of the two men who had allegedly attacked Indian inmate Sarabjit Singh inside Kot Lakhpat prison in 2013.

Singh, who was awarded death sentence for involvement in a series of bomb attacks in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990, died in a hospital a few days later.

Interior minister says definite conclusion to be reached after probe; calls Bahawalnagar incident ‘fight between brothers’

“India was directly involved in a few murder incidents here in the past,” the minister said, adding that an investigation was ongoing, but for now, “the doubt is that India was involved”.

“At this time, all evidence is pointing towards them (India),” Mr Naqvi said but added that any definite conclusion at this moment would be premature.

The attack on Tamba came days after the UK newspaper Guardian reported that the Indian government assassinated individuals in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to eliminate “terrorists” living on foreign soil.

Due to the attack’s significance, the Punjab government has referred the case to the police’s Counter-Terrorism Depart­ment Punjab for investigation.

‘Fight between brothers’

The minister was asked about last week’s incident in Bahawalnagar, where police and army personnel came face to face following the arrest of a serving officer.

Mr Naqvi rejected the claims that Punjab Police was demoralised after the attack.

“This isn’t something [on the basis of which] we should say that the entire force has lost morale,” the minister said, adding that an investigation was underway to ascertain facts.

He said the incident was akin to a “fight between brothers at home” and added that, in his view, it “shouldn’t have been such a big issue”.

Mr Naqvi claimed that a similar incident had happened in India, but “it didn’t become a very big issue”.

On rising street crimes in Karachi, the interior minister said he was in contact with the Sindh police chief and the force was “aggressively working” to control the issue, APP added.

Mr Naqvi, whose ministry also oversees immigration at airports, said steps were being taken to increase the number of counters at Lahore Airport to process the passengers faster.

He said the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Federal Aviation Minister Khawaja Asif have been contacted in this regard.

He also said that the FIA’s Cybercrime Wing was being revamped, and the vacant posts in the investigation agency would be filled on priority.

Earlier, Mr Naqvi inaugurated a new investigation block in the FIA office, named after Shahzad Younis, an officer who was killed in an attack on the building in 2009.

The officer’s widow, Sub Inspector Faiza Shahzad, FIA Director General Ahmad Ishaque Jehangir, FIA Lahore Director Sarfraz Virk and other officers were also present on the occasion.

The interior minister paid tribute to the martyred officer and also visited different sections of the newly inaugurated investigation block.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2024